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could boast, or complain, of five different fertility deities in my lineage, but I'd never lain with anyone who
had once been worshiped as one.
His body reacted to the power that shivered between us even as he closed his eyes and fought to not
react. But it was like, well, a force of nature. There were precious few fertility deities, fallen or otherwise,
among the Unseelie; that was a Seelie court power for the most part. My father, Essus, had been an
exception, but even he was not a fertility of sex and love but more of sacrifice and crops.
I found enough air to speak, but it was on a whisper that I said, "When the time comes, make sure we
do not bring down the walls."
Doyle's voice came from behind me like molasses, slow and dark: "What are you going to do?"
"What Adair wants me to do."
Adair looked at me then, and his eyes held pain, but it was a pain born of desire. He wanted to unleash
the power that vibrated between us, to unleash it and let it spill between us, over us. Like me, he had not
felt the rush of another's magic that so mirrored his own in a very long time.
I was not such a fool as to believe it was the sight of me that filled his eyes with such need. It was the
power that trembled and beat like a third pulse between us. I'd been near Adair before and never felt so
much as a twinge of such things. Only two things, perhaps three, had changed. One, he was nude, and he
was one of the guards who did not participate in the casual nudity of the court or the casual teasing. He
seemed to believe, as had Doyle and Frost once, that if there was no release then they did not wish to
play. I stood there, wanting to close that last inch of distance between us and near afraid to. So much
power already, what would it be like to touch his skin, to let my body sink in against that power, and the
power that lay in the muscles and meat of him.
I put my hands out to either side of his waist, against the slick black stone of the door. Even that cold
touch could not cool the rising power between us. His body was no longer ignoring me, but standing firm
and solid, tight against his own stomach, though he lay a little to one side, a graceful, thick curve instead
of the straightness I'd become accustomed to.
I raised my gaze back up until I found his eyes again. With every other tricolored iris each individual
shade burned brighter, but as Adair's power spilled through his eyes, it was as if the colors became one,
the golden yellow of sunshine. His eyes were simply yellow light, as if two tiny, perfect suns had come to
rise in his face.
It took him two attempts to whisper, "Princess."
The power breathed and writhed between us, as if our two magicks were a line of air, one hot, one cold,
so that as they mixed, storms would rise. I steadied myself, against the stones and slowly, slowly, began
to lean into that warmth.
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It was like bathing in power, and I mourned that I wore clothes and could not feel what this was like on
my bare skin. But I would not have stopped now, not even to undress. I would not lose an inch of
closeness to the trembling heat. A second before my body touched his, Adair said, "The ring . . ."
Our bodies touched, and the magic thrust through us both, tearing a cry from our throats, stripping us of
our shields and most of our control. We filled the hallway with shadows. My skin glowed like the moon
on the brightest of nights. Adair glowed as if the sun in his eyes had spilled over his skin. It wasn't that he
was formed of light, but as if his skin lay just over the light, like a film of water over a fire.
But it wasn't hot, this fire, it was warm. A warmth to keep you safe on a winter's night. A warmth to
bring your fields back to life after the long cold. A warmth to drive desire through your body, and all
other thoughts from your mind. It was the only excuse I had for forgetting that I had not touched him with
the ring. All that had gone before was without the touch of that magic.
I raised my hands to caress the sides of his body, and the ring brushed against him, the lightest of
touches, and the world trembled around us, as if the air itself had drawn a breath. Adair began to fall
backward. He put one arm around my waist, and the other had a sword naked in it, before his back hit
something solid.
We were half standing, half leaning inside a stone alcove. Adair shoved me behind him, so that his tall
body blocked most of the opening, and hid me from sight. I stumbled in a small hole and fell back against
the limbs of a small dead tree that covered the back of the alcove. The light in our skins had not died
away, so that it bounced shadows on the crumbling stone and the rock-strewn hole at my feet. I knew
this alcove, but it was floors lower, and had never been near my aunt's rooms.
Doyle's voice came: "You are safe. This is no attack."
"Then what is it?" Adair said, and his voice held a tension that was only a little reassured by Doyle's
words.
"The queen's doors moved through the stone as if the stones were water," Barinthus said, "and the
alcove appeared behind you."
"You know that the sithen rearranges itself," Doyle said.
"Not this suddenly," Adair said.
Now that I knew I wasn't in imminent danger, I moved my feet, carefully, out of the empty pool. Once it
had been a bubbling spring. The story was that the spring had a fruit tree behind it, so that from the
outside the tree was small like an apple tree espaliered against the stones, but if you knelt at the spring to
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